I think it is funny, all these paint-and-drink events I keep reading about. This is a new trend – to get people to come out for an evening of painting and drinking. Perhaps they have to drink in order to paint? Perhaps they have to loosen up in order to let out their inner artists.
To me, being artistic is intoxicating enough. I don’t need extra. But I certainly understand that other people do. I remember when I did.
I remember when I thought that the only time I could be creative was when I was stoned. I remember one of the reasons I used to say I could not stop smoking pot was that it would stunt my creativity.
Nothing is sillier than that. Pot and booze don’t make you creative. They just make you forget yourself.
And maybe that is the point. We get stuck in our view of ourselves. We create these rigid roles of who we are. We are shopkeepers, or secretaries. We are adults, parents, responsible people. We have grown past being creative, right?
But we haven’t. Art isn’t just for kids, just like reading isn’t just for kids. But then again, that too could use some work. Way too many parents get books for their kids and not for themselves. Reading, and art, is for everyone.
Create art, however you can. Creating art is healing for the soul. It won’t look pretty at first. It doesn’t ever have to look pretty, in fact. It just has to happen.
I create something every day. I think of it as a vitamin for my soul. I write, paint, draw, collage, or bead. Sometimes I do several of these. Sure, I have a full time job and run a house. Yet I make time to create every day. If I don’t, I feel out of sorts. I’ve learned that creating things isn’t extra. It is everything.
When I create, I don’t forget myself. I find myself.
Art, unlike alcohol or drugs, has no negative side effects. Don’t ask your doctor if art is right for you. Just do it.
Home » Posts tagged 'self-care' (Page 5)
Tag Archives: self-care
We have to be weak to be strong.
We are taught how to be strong, but we aren’t taught how to be human. Weakness is seen as a bad thing. Loss is glossed over.
We are lying to ourselves and to each other.
In our lies we are killing ourselves.
Sometimes the death is dramatic – A school shooting. A suicide.
Sometimes the death is slower – Fifty years stuck in a job, a marriage, a life that doesn’t fit, doesn’t feel real.
In our desperation to conform, to put on a happy face, we lie to ourselves and deny our basic humanity.
One thing I try to tell people when I visit with them in hard circumstances (a death, a divorce, a dismissal from a job) is “It is OK to say ‘This sucks.'” Invariably they take me up on it.
I think this is what we all need – permission to be honest about our feelings, which is at the core, permission to be human. We spend so long putting on a happy face that we stop knowing what our real face is anymore.
I just found out that a friend I knew from high school has killed himself. Things hadn’t been going well but nobody expected him to take his life.
A few months ago a lady told me that her teenaged stepdaughter had committed suicide. She was distraught over being dumped by a boy.
My father attempted taking his own life several times in my childhood. His grandfather was successful, if you can think of killing yourself as something to succeed at.
These losses are all holes. We are lesser because they are not with us.
I wish there was a better answer than calling the police or the shrinks when someone is suicidal. I envision an intervention, an escape, where people are retrained how to take care of themselves. Not medicine and shock therapy, but true healing. I envision a vacation, a spa for the soul.
I committed myself twice. Twice I knew that I wasn’t well and I sought help. Twice I was in a mental hospital. I didn’t learn anything useful in either one. It was only when I got out and started reading about bipolar disorder for myself that I started to get better.
I wasn’t “healed” when I left the hospital. They let you out when the insurance benefits stop.
I started to heal when I started to take care of myself, but I feel that I should have been taught some of these skills in the hospital. It is hard to look out for yourself when it is your mind that is the part that is broken.
The best medicine is self care, and prevention. I’ve learned that there is a fine line for me for how much I can deviate in my routine.
The basics? No caffeine. Limited (or no) processed sugar. Drink lots of water. Avoid all stimulants. Regular exercise. Creating, in one form or another, every day. Making time to be alone, and time to be with friends. Learning to speak my truth, and set boundaries.
Sure I take my medicine. But I need a lot less than many people because I don’t get as off balance.
When I stop doing what I know I need to do to take care of myself I feel that I “have let my flame get low”. All I have to do to build it back up is to start doing those things again.
These are the skills that mental hospitals should teach. These are the skills that all hospitals should teach.
But until they get the clue, it is time for us to teach ourselves.
Mental health is not an accident. It is a lot of work.
Mental health isn’t an accident
Mental health is just like physical health. If you don’t take care of it every day, you’ll get sick.
The bad part is that there isn’t an immediate symptom that something is wrong, with both things. It takes weeks or months of not taking care of yourself to fall ill. By then it is hard to pull yourself back together.
It isn’t like if you touch a hot stove and you get burned. The repercussion is quick in that instance. There is a simple one to one relationship. You learn very fast that if you don’t want that kind of pain, don’t do that kind of action.
But mental illness, like physical illness, is cumulative. It is a slow wearing away of yourself and your strength.
But it isn’t an accident. And it can be prevented.
Studying for life.
Health isn’t like a test you can cram for. It is something that you have to “study” for every day or you will fail.
So many people want to get in shape but they don’t want to do the work. So many people wait until they have a serious diagnosis before they start to take their health seriously. Really, they want to be in shape, but not to get in shape.
It is too easy to blame someone else. Your parents didn’t exercise, so you don’t. Your friends all eat unhealthy food, so you do. This is such a passive way of living. They don’t feel your pain when you can’t walk around the block, or you can’t get out of bed without help. You have to live your life, and by living, I don’t mean just exist.
There needs to be an entire sea-change in the way we think, but until then we have to do it for ourselves.
I have a dream that hospitals and rehab centers will teach people how to be healthy rather than treat their sicknesses. People will learn that health is more than just about diet and exercise.
They will teach people how to care for themselves through food and exercise. People will learn how to cook for themselves and what are healthy choices when they are out at a restaurant. They will learn how to grow their own food. There will be no caffeine or refined sugar, and no tobacco.
They will learn about healthy boundaries. They will learn how to protect themselves and how to respect the boundaries of others.
They will learn how to share their thoughts and how to listen to other’s thoughts. They will learn dialogue versus debate.
They will get in touch with their inner child.
They will explore different ways to express themselves. All arts will be shared and people will be encouraged to pick as many as needed.
They will learn the value of getting enough sleep.
They will get career counseling to find a job that fits their abilities and beliefs.
This movement starts with each one of us, right now. It isn’t a top-down way of thinking. It is a bottom-up. We have to be the change.
Communication breakdown
People just want to be understood. They want to know that they matter, that their voice matters. Nothing is worse than not being able to communicate. Not everybody can communicate verbally. It is important to have as many ways as possible.
Babies that are taught sign language show less frustration than other ones. They are not able to master speech at an early age, but simplified gestural language is perfect for them. With baby sign language they can express if they are hungry, or tired, or hurt. This cuts down on the frustration for them and their parents.
Adults have the same needs. They just want to be understood. People need to be Seen and Heard. Communication is the responsibility of the producer and the consumer. It is important to speak clearly, and to pay attention. But what if you can’t speak well? Then you can draw, or paint, or write, or dance, or bead, or any other number of ways of getting your idea out.
It is essential for humans to be creative. That is what makes us human. We need to express ourselves, and to share what we feel with others. When they don’t understand us, we feel isolated and lost. That sense of connection, of community, is a hallmark of humanity.
I believe that if we teach all people different ways of expressing themselves, and we teach all people how to “listen”, then we will have peace. I believe that we won’t have violence towards self or others.
I believe that all violence, whether directed against the self or others, is the result of people not being able to connect to others because of a communication breakdown.
Cooking as an empowering act.
I’ve come to see cooking not as a chore but as a truly artistic and creative act. It is so empowering to feed myself.
It is amazing to know that the majority of the prepared foods we have in our refrigerator at home were prepared by me. Hummus. Pesto. Banana bread. My green breakfast drink. Even dessert – all prepared by me. From scratch, and organic as much as possible.
How did we as a society get so far away from this? We all used toprepare our own foods. Large grocery stores are a new phenomenon. Sure, there were greengrocers. They had fruits and vegetables. Then there might also be a local baker. Baking bread takes a long time and is hot work. In some villages in Greece it is common for women to prepare their bread but then take it to the baker to get it cooked. They return later to pick it up.
But we used to all know where our food came from, and what was in it. We used to all know, because we made it ourselves. In some cases we knew because we grew it ourselves too.
In getting away from making our own food, we’ve gotten away from ourselves. We’ve given away a part of ourselves. We are what we eat after all. If we don’t know what we eat, then what are we?
There are so many foods with ingredients in them that we can’t even pronounce. They are more chemical than real. One of my favorite examples is this.
If you have to tell me it is a real lime, then it isn’t. Real limes don’t need labels.
Look at all the preservatives. It isn’t hard to buy a real lime and to take the juice out of it. Of course it has preservatives. This is the only way it will last from the production plant to your house. As Michael Pollan says in his book “Food Rules”, eat plants, not food made in plants.
It takes some time, sure. It can be done. I work 40 hours a week, and I had no cooking experience, and I can do it. Take it step by step. Pick one thing you like to eat that is prepared, and learn how to make it. You can get a book from the library, or watch a video on YouTube, or you can ask a friend who knows. Or you can experiment and figure it out on your own. That is fun too.
The more you make for yourself, the healthier and happier you will be.
Learned helplessness – victimhood and the Siren song.
Learned helplessness is a terrible thing.
Thinking you are a victim makes you so.
Blaming others for your sad state of affairs keeps you trapped there.
Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right.
I knew a lady who once complained that there was a roach in her house. She was concerned about how filthy and dirty they are. She said that she was so upset about it that she had to have a smoke. I told her that the cigarette would cause her far more damage to her health than the roach. She got very angry with me and then told me that my saying that made her have to smoke even more.
It has to be terrible to live your life like a puppet.
I did not make her smoke. I did not force her to do anything. That was her choice.
Look at the Nazis. They said they had to commit all those atrocities because otherwise they would be killed. But it is better to die clean than live dirty. They made their choice.
To smoke is to commit an atrocity against yourself.
I knew a guy who weighed over 500 pounds. He said that he couldn’t help it. Everybody in his family was that large. If everybody in his family was as inactive as him, it makes sense. He even had a free membership to the Y and spent his whole time either drinking coffee or floating around in the pool. There were many opportunities for him to get healthy and he chose to not take them. He ate terribly, he refused to exercise. He acted as if he had no choice in the matter. That too was his choice.
It is all about choices. Sometimes people make bad choices. Then there are repercussions. It isn’t fate. It isn’t being unlucky. It is a direct correlation to an action or inaction.
You reap what you sow. If you don’t sow anything, you don’t reap anything. Simple.
I knew a guy who said that he wanted to quit smoking. And then he took another puff of his cigarette. If you want to quit smoking, quit smoking. Really. You are the one buying the cigarettes, lighting them, and bringing them up to your mouth and inhaling. These are all conscious acts. It is all something you are doing. It isn’t something that happens to you. It is your choice.
Whatever you want to be, you have to do. If you want to be healthy, you have to do the things that healthy people do. You have to eat healthy food. You have to eat a reasonable amount of it. You have to exercise daily. You have to get enough sleep.
You can’t wish it into being. You have to do it.
To get jealous of someone who has something you don’t is to paint yourself as a victim. It is in fact why you don’t have what they do – because you have given your power away. You have said that you can’t do it. You have chosen that.
You will either find a way or find an excuse.
Look at what you can do and do it.
I used to be obese. I used to smoke pot daily. I used to smoke clove cigarettes. I wallowed in my helplessness.
I remember one time I decided to at least slow down on my pot smoking. I put the supplies in a plastic bag and sealed it with rubber bands. I put it up in my closet. I had to get a chair to pull it down. It took me quite a bit of time to get to it.
Then I’d climb up there and pull it all apart, and smoke anyway. All along I felt helpless, in the thrall of my desire for that drug. I’d feel guilty and upset and angry at myself. But I’d seal it up again, and it would slow me down a little. That step alone was a step towards getting free.
No change happens immediately. It is all made of little steps.
I even moved two hours away from the person I bought pot from so that it would be harder for me to smoke. I had to drive a long way to get pot. I did that on purpose, to make it harder for myself. That too was a step.
Lao Tzu says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And then there is another step. And another. You just have to keep walking towards your goal, one step at a time.
I remember one time I was making a rosary. I worked on it a little. Then I put it aside. A lot of time went by and I didn’t work on it. But then when I came back to it I realized that all the work I had done was still there. It hadn’t lost anything. So I added to it.
Positive actions towards a goal are the same.
You don’t abuse drugs, or food, or sex, or whatever. You abuse yourself. You are insulting your soul. You are abusing the gift that God has given you.
Look at Ulysses. He wanted to hear the sound of the Sirens. He knew that hearing it might drive him insane. He told his men to put wax in their ears so they would be safe, and to tie him to the mast so he couldn’t jump into the sea and drown.
Our addictions are like the Siren song. They draw us away from our rational selves. When we are sober, when we are free of the pull, we have the chance to make a decision to make it harder on ourselves to succumb.
My putting the supply of pot further away from myself was my lashing myself to the mast. It slowed me down and made me think. Ideally, yes, I would have thrown it away. At times I did that too, and I just bought more. At that time, I thought I could control it. Just like Ulysses, I wanted to hear that Siren song, just not succumb to it. It is a dangerous game.
Jesus says in Matthew 5:29-30 (ESV)
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Sometimes we have to make hard choices in order to get healthy.
It is hard to be addicted, but it is still a conscious choice. The addiction is like nothing else. It consumes you. Ideally, it is better to not start. I don’t think anybody will ever tell you that smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, and eating junk food is good for you. We all delude ourselves when we think we can do these things and not get hurt. But if we do succumb, and fall into that pit, there is a way out.
It is step, by step, by step.
But first you have to stop being a victim.
I knew a guy who abused prescription drugs. They weren’t even his drugs. It wasn’t an accident. He didn’t develop an addiction from taking a prescription drug that was for him. He voluntarily and soberly took the first pill or four. He wasn’t an addict when he started.
He knew the risks. He thought it couldn’t happen to him. He thought he was special.
He ended up going to rehab twice. His wife left him. His brother started abusing drugs along with him. His father got sick from all the stress. And then he actually had the nerve to say “Why does all this bad stuff keep happening to us?” and “Why does God hate us so much?”
This passive attitude was the reason he was in that mess. He was the cause of all that mess, not God.
We are the cause of our own problems – not others. We are the solution too, not others.
Ego
The world goes out of its way to bring you down. Don’t join them.
Many people will show modesty. They will refuse to say that they are good at what they do for fear of being seen as arrogant.
I take it another way. God made you special. For you to downgrade or diminish something that you are good at is to talk badly about God.
Be proud of who you are. Let your light shine.
When someone tries to bring you down, they are really just jealous of you. They think they have to bring your down to raise themselves up. There is also a good chance that this is how they were talked to as a child. Their parents taught them that this is how you talk to people. They taught them to only see the bad. They taught them that they were bad.
This is a teachable moment.
You have a chance of re-educating them. You can respond gently, with love, that you are not the dirt they think you are. They haven’t seen your flowers yet.
If you let someone treat you like dirt, you’ll start to believe it too.
Don’t let somebody knock you down, even if that somebody is yourself.
Who is the dummy? – on boundaries.
Who is the dummy? If Jane asks Bob for ten dollars every day, and Bob gives it to her happily, then there is no problem. If he resents her asking but says nothing, then she isn’t in the wrong, he is. He’s the dummy.
Whatever someone wants from you – time, energy, money, whatever, if it is a burden for you, you must say no.
Consider if someone shows up to your house unexpected. They ask if they can come in. You are tired after a long day and you are about to go to bed. You don’t want to stay up entertaining them. You have to work early tomorrow morning. Do you let them in?
What if they want to stay in your house overnight? Or for a week? Or for a month? Or a year? Or forever?
Where do you draw the line?
At what point do your own needs come into play? If you do not stand up for yourself, who will?
I know several people who if they don’t respond to a text message immediately, their friend or relative will start to freak out. They will send another text. They will call. They will contact another person to check up on them. This is their normal behavior.
But the friend or relative isn’t the dummy. They haven’t been told “no” in a way that they understand. Perhaps they haven’t been told “no” at all.
It is up to each of us to establish boundaries of what is OK and what isn’t.
Now, here’s the funny bit – the other person can establish their own boundaries too. There is a lady at work who wears a really strong scented lotion. It triggers my asthma. The smell is so strong that if she has walked through that area, the smell lingers like a cloud.
Years ago I just suffered quietly, harboring my resentment that this horrible smell was affecting me. She didn’t know that it bothered me. So in that case, I was the dummy for not saying anything.
Then I bolstered up my courage and said something to her. She brushed off my concern. Sadly, this is common. People don’t understand asthma. They don’t get that I have to stop breathing for a little bit when I encounter a trigger smell, in order to not overexpose myself to it. If I get too much of it and the asthma attack starts it feels like someone has grabbed my left lung in a vise every time I breathe in. I cannot get in a full breath. It is terrifying.
And it is preventable. If I had my way, a whole lot of perfumes would just stop being produced, because it isn’t just me that is affected. But that is another post for another day.
Because this lady doesn’t work in my area, I’ve not done anything more about it. She doesn’t spend a lot of time around me. If she did, I’d have to talk to a manager about it. I talked to her, and she ignored me. This was months ago.
Then, yesterday, she saw me in the break room and said that she’d just be in there quickly, because she “had heard” that I was allergic to her lotion. She “didn’t want me to throw up.” Throwing up isn’t part of an asthma attack. And she “had heard” it from me – it wasn’t gossip. She was a bit confused all around, but she had decided to just not be around me. I mentioned that she could choose to not wear it, and she said she didn’t like the unscented lotion.
It was a weird compromise, but it was a compromise. If I’d not said anything to her, then I’d be in the wrong – not her. In the best of worlds, she would have understood the depth of harm her overly-scented lotion does to me. I don’t think that is possible considering her statements from yesterday. It is obvious that she misunderstood what I’d said to her before.
It is weird that she somehow “got it” months later, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I had to say something, and she had a choice.
Morning meditation
I know many people who say “The whole day is blown” when they’ve had a bad morning. I like to think of it as the bad stuff has gotten out of the way early. It isn’t a foretaste of the way the day is going to go.
It is the same thing with your week or your year or your life. Just because it starts off bad doesn’t mean it is going to finish that way.
If you look for the bad then that is all you will see. The more energy you give it, the more it will have. There will always be bad things happening, but do you really want to give them your time and attention?
I know plenty of people who think that bad things always happen to them, that they are victims. They think there is some cosmic joke and they are the punchline, or the punching bag. The interesting thing is that the same events, or worse, happen to other people and they just let it roll off of them.
Just because you have always thought in a certain way doesn’t mean you have to continue thinking that way. Just because your parents and their parents and their parents were gloomy and doomy doesn’t mean you have to be. Attitude is not genetic. It isn’t like a tendency towards heart disease or diabetes. And even with those, a genetic weakness doesn’t mean you will get the disease. It just means you now know what to watch out for and prevent against.
How do you prevent against an unhealthy attitude? Isn’t it just like a reflex? Something bad happens and you react to it. You get hit in the knee and your leg pops up. You get hit with a subpoena and your blood pressure pops up.
Attitude is controllable. It isn’t easy. It takes a bit of unlearning. But this is true with everything. The first step is knowing that there is a way out, that you don’t have to stay in that mental space.
Then, every time you find yourself getting angry at an event, try to notice yourself doing it. Observe without judgment. This is hard, because judgment is all you had going for you for a long time. Just look at your reaction as if it is a small child having a temper tantrum. It isn’t you. It is a thing outside of you. Forgive it, because it is a childish thing. It doesn’t know better.
This will take a while to get to. Forgive yourself for not doing it right. Nobody makes a change instantly. It isn’t possible. Forgiveness is essential. And if you can’t forgive yourself all the time, forgive yourself for that too. Being thankful is helpful too. Be thankful for the bad situations, because they are teaching you how to change. They are opening you up to a new side of life. They are your way in.
Soon you will be letting things just roll off of you. They will happen, but they won’t affect you. You’ll be like a boat in the sea, moving with the waves but not toppled by them. They won’t wash over you and drown you like they used to.
Then, because you have a better control of your reaction, the event won’t have as much power as it did over you. Instead of events controlling you, you have control. Because you have control, the events don’t seem as bad.
betsybeadhead 
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